Cherry Tree Wealth Management

Tony Christianson leads the wealth management division as President, with Principal Gordon Heinitz overseeing portfolio construction and client strategy. The broader Cherry Tree organization traces its roots to 1980, and investment opportunities are sourced through the affiliated investment banking and principal investing teams, giving Christianson and Heinitz direct line-of-sight into deal flow that originates in-house.

Cherry Tree Wealth Management is the registered investment advisor and multi-family office division within the Cherry Tree Companies ecosystem. Cherry Tree also operates Cherry Tree Capital Advisors, a lower-middle-market investment bank, and Cherry Tree Investments, which invests firm principal capital directly into real estate and private credit. This affiliated structure means wealth management clients frequently co-invest alongside firm principals in vehicles the organization itself sponsors.

The firm does both but skews heavily toward direct and co-investment structures, particularly in real estate and private credit. Cherry Tree sponsors its own operating companies and funds — including Roers Companies in real estate — and wealth management clients access these through direct allocations rather than blind-pool commitments to third-party managers. The firm's investment banking arm also structures private credit vehicles that serve as a captive pipeline for client capital.

Cherry Tree focuses almost exclusively on the Upper Midwest and Great Plains, with offices in Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. In real estate, the firm targets value-add and development-stage multifamily and commercial properties in secondary and tertiary markets across the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Private credit allocations go to lower-middle-market companies throughout the same region, typically with $1M to $10M revenue profiles.

Rather than committing to external real estate funds, Cherry Tree forms and sponsors its own real estate operating companies. The most prominent example is Roers Companies, a development and property management firm active across the Dakotas and Minnesota. Cherry Tree co-invests client capital alongside its own principal equity into individual development projects or portfolio acquisitions, maintaining operational control through the sponsored operator model.

Cherry Tree's investment mandates exclude venture capital, public equities as a core allocation, and any geography beyond the Upper Midwest and adjacent Great Plains states for direct real estate. The firm's wealth management practice is built for capital preservation and income generation through hard assets and secured lending rather than technology or growth-stage exposure, and it does not manufacture or distribute its own mutual funds or ETFs.

Cherry Tree generally does not function as a limited partner in third-party funds. Instead, it brings its own deal flow — typically real estate projects or private credit transactions sourced through its investment banking division — into the wealth management practice for direct co-investment by clients. External managers or institutional GPs are rarely involved in the firm's client allocations.